After cutting it in half, pulling it apart 6" to get the wheelbase I needed, and adding frame rails and welding in a new floorpan, it was time to put all the bits underneith back together. This meant new driveshaft, a bolt-on extention for the aluminum PPF, extended fuel and brake lines, etc. All of this is pretty well covered in Episode 5 of my youtube channel:
Then I could finally drive it around the block!
Sorry I don't have a lot of extra information and pictures in this block post that isn't covered in the videos.
Here's a close-up of the steel bolt-on extention for the PPF. You can also see the new driveshaft, which I had to have custom made for $400.
You can also just barely see it but I have the e-brake cable extended by clamping on a new peice of cable to make it longer. It's kinda half-assed but I'm confident that it will hold even in an emergency brake situation. Speaking of brakes though, I don't want to half-ass the hard brake lines. I got some compression brake line fittings but returned them after reading about them online. Instead, I used a proper union. I ended up needing to only flair one end of the steel brake line, and the cheap tool from Harbor Freight couldn't do it, I had to get this better one. Then I got a 60" length of copper brake line to make the connection to the rear distribution block (one brake line feeds both rear brakes). This meant that there was only one union, intead of two. Less is more.
Some guys who are smarter than me on the Miata.net forum are expressing doubt about the steel PPF extension. It's recommended that I buy another PPF, and graph the two together. Take the two pieces to a professional aluminum welder. I don't disagree that my method is half-assed but the truth is that I'm in a hurry to get these two cars smashed into one. Unless I'm wrong, I think the worst case scenario is that the aluminum will start to crack and fail as it wants to push upward during a hard acceleration. This would be bad on the driveshaft u-joints. My current thinking process is that if this starts to happen, then I'll add that crossmember after all. It would be no problem. Hell, maybe I'll do it before there's any issues.
Things are about to change quite drastically! Stay tuned...
